I P O M O E A
—
T
he longer he lingers here beside the river, chasing after fireflies and dancing in their light, the more he can feel his tensions easing away.He stands there knee-deep in the water, chest heaving, watching as the current parts around them. Dozens of fireflies buzz around him, and this far from the lantern-light they are the brightest creatures around. They press in closer and closer to him, and as Ipomoea watches the first of them fall against his skin like a sigh, he wonders if it is the water or the fireflies that has him trembling in the water. Maybe it’s just the magic of the night, running fever-hot through his veins.
Maybe Ipomoea is remembering what it’s like to be one of the living.
The lantern-light clings to him like a second skin and makes him feel almost-holy. Even when his breaths turn to gasps and his sides begin to darken (with sweat or with river-water, he is not sure), even then he dances still. In dancing he can almost remember how he used to be, how as a boy he could go to a festival and not wonder what the bright lights and the exuberance might be distracting him from. He loses himself in the game, and never once asks himself if it’s a game worth playing, or what the purpose of it is, or all the terrible what if’s that keep him lying awake at night.
He’s not thinking of the forest tonight (or the shadows between the trees, or the blood soaking through the soil, or the monsters he hunted just the night before). Ipomoea is not even thinking of the morning (it feels so far away tonight, like time exists only for counting fireflies and dancing in the river.)
For tonight, he is only thinking of the way the water makes him feel almost-clean again, like he has never heard the words death or murder or justice. And he gives in only to the delight that blooms like a flower in his chest each time a firefly kisses his skin. He forgets everything but the trill of the lute and the thrum of his own blood, the song that pulls horses and fireflies alike to the water.
In the morning perhaps, when there is enough light to see the shadows for what they are, perhaps then he will remember that he is as much broken as he is whole in the remaking.
But tonight, he dances.
When he stumbles from the river at last, all he can see are the fireflies. He sees them wrapped like a crown upon another man’s head, shimmering like bands of gold around a young girl’s legs, pooling in the creases of another’s spine like fire rising from their flesh.
It is on the bank that he sees the girl who looks more like a horse made of light, nearly hidden beneath the endless strings of fireflies that cloak her. He watches her, as the notes begin to warble and the musicians begin to play a different song. The fire-light seems to flare, like the bonfires know what it’s like to be alive and ache from the sound of music alone. And as the song turns into something almost-slow, Ipomoea finds himself moving through the crowds as solos become duets.
"I don’t think this song is meant to be danced to alone." He comes alongside her, bending his body against the light. When he smiles the light flashes gold in his eyes.
"Can I have this dance?"
you are the poem wildflowers write to spring
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